


Rootless

by Anonymous



Category: Sky High (2005)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship/Love, Getting Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29069241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Warren makes a habit of not caring about anything.Then Layla Williams comes along.
Relationships: Warren Peace/Layla Williams
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2020





	Rootless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meilan_Firaga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meilan_Firaga/gifts).



Warren saw the breakup coming before Layla and Will did. It took him longer to be sure about Will’s side of it. They spent less time together these days, and Stronghold had a general affability about him that made him harder to read. It was different with Layla. The stars left her eyes, and it was obvious to him that the fairy tale was over even before they told their friends that they were mutually and amicably breaking up one day at lunch near the end of freshman year.

There was genuine surprise and gasps from their other friends, questions about whether they’d give it another go and offers to help them work through whatever was making them call it quits, but Warren knew it was a done deal. The thing that was splitting them up wasn’t something either of them could fix. No spark. Sometimes that was just the way things went.

“You good?” he whispered to Layla at their end of the table when the conversation finally steered towards the explosion in one of the labs that morning and the mood shifted back towards casual gossip and jokes.

She smiled, but while Will laughed at the other end of the table, there was no mirth in her eyes when she looked up at him. “Of course. Don’t worry.”

Things really had changed for him when people went around accusing him of caring about stuff now. They were usually underestimating his capacity for indifference. But Layla wasn’t stuff. And, despite the exasperated voice in his head that still sometimes nudged him back towards his former loner lifestyle, he did care.

While the others debated who would go down for the lab explosion, he watched Layla pick at her food and nudged her foot with his boot. She glanced up, and he snapped his fingers. A tiny flame, as small as the flicker at the tip of a candle wick appeared at the end of his thumb and index finger. It wavered there before ever so slowly shifting its orange edges into what was a passable square with a hollowed out center.

An uncertain smile of confusion tugged at the corner of her lips, and the square dissipated into nothing.

“I’ve been experimenting with my power. I think I can manipulate the form it takes.” Not very well yet and not much bigger than a penny. Creating giant fireballs and hurling them at people was a lot easier than mastering any kind of control over what he was doing.

“Warren, that’s so cool,” she said and did seem genuinely distracted from her breakup drama for the moment, so he stretched his arm between them and snapped his fingers again even though he usually didn’t try so soon after a previous attempt to conserve his energy. Precision took a lot more out of him than power. 

The square was slower to take shape this time, and to his chagrin, a bead of sweat formed on his brow as he urged the little flame to mold into it.

“Can you make a heart?” she asked.

She smiled at his square fire, so he didn’t roll his eyes at the request. By the end of lunch, the best he was able to manage was a circle.

“Thanks,” she murmured like his many attempts had added up to something other than the failures they were. He shrugged as the rest of their friends got up to head out of the cafeteria.

“Sure, hippie.”

He walked her to her class and slumped down low in his desk, ignoring the teacher’s glare, when it made him late to his own.

****

Layla had a tree house in her backyard where she experimented with her powers where she could avoid her parents’ wrath if she accidentally speared an heirloom with an impossibly large blossom if she accidentally grew one too large, too fast. That was where Warren found her after school. He hadn’t bothered to knock at her front door, instead rounding the house altogether and going out back to the tree he thought of as hers. That was where he’d found her every other time she’d been stressed or down about something that year if she didn’t turn up at the Paper Lantern.

There was a soft pattering up there, and he hoped she wasn’t trying to grow friendly Venus flytraps again. The last one was ten feet tall and almost bit his head off.

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long vine,” he called up dryly.

Layla popped her head out of the window and sent him a smile that looked more like herself. She disappeared back inside, and a thick vine uncurled from the base of the treehouse and lowered down to the ground. The tip of it curled up into a foothold, and he put his boot into the loop. The vine rose and took him up with it until he made it to the hole in the floorboards and he was able to lift himself up inside.

She knelt in one corner under a window that overlooked the pretty garden in the yard below, which meant she’d manipulated the vine and hauled him up all in the back burner of her mind. It still blew him away that there were people who looked down on her for her sidekick status when she could cocoon them in a thornbush and make the earth swallow them up if she had the mind, or the black heart, to do it.

“Hey,” she said. There was a line of seeds spread out on the windowsill, and tiny sprouts were coming out of them.

“Hey.”

He settled next to her and quizzed her on what the seeds were and listened to her enthusiasm, wondering if he would ever feel as excited about anything as she was about a bunch of sprouts.

“I am, you know?” she said after a long time while he leaned against the wall, one arm resting along the sill so his hand could weave through the breeze outside.

“You are what?”

“Good,” she reminded him of her assurance at lunch earlier. “You don’t have to check up on me. I’m not heartbroken or anything.”

He knew that. He hadn’t expected to find her buried in wads of tissue and ice cream. The stars in her eyes with Will had never burned brightly enough to break her heart when they smothered out.

“I’m more disappointed that I’m _not_ heartbroken than actually hurt. I guess I just thought… love would be bigger, would feel like more than…” More than what she had with Will. But she didn’t say it, and Warren didn’t push. “Isn’t that awful?”

She sat back on her heels and turned a shamefaced expression on him. He weaved his fingers through the cool air and thought about how easily he could burn her garden down. And how easily she could grow it back.

“I think love is probably like most things in life,” he said, not that it was something he gave a lot of thought to or at all. “It comes in a lot of different ways, and you’ll know the big kind when it comes.”

Friendship was love, and what she had with Will wasn’t going anywhere. It just also couldn’t live up to the hopes she’d pinned onto her crush before they got together, back when she was the overlooked buddy and he was an idea in her head. She thought about it quietly as she tended to the new life spread out in seeds between them on the windowsill.

After a long while, she set aside the disappointment of her ruined fantasy love to ask, “Can you make a heart yet?”

Warren sighed, still tired from all the mental effort he’d put into the trick earlier, but he didn’t like the grey way her heavy thoughts dimmed the light in her eyes. So he raised his fingers, and with a tiny snap of fire, he tried.

****

The summer before sophomore year, Warren got a letter from his father asking him to come visit him in lockup. It was short and gave no explanation for the request. He hadn’t seen his father in several months. The letters had stopped, and they’d been addressed primarily to his mother anyway. Both of their names had been removed from his list of allowed visitors, and Warren spent the better part of the time since then pretending that it didn’t matter.

He tucked the letter away in a drawer without telling his mom about it, burned the evening tossing rocks at the quarry with a bottle of beer, and slept on it. He found himself texting Layla the next afternoon after briefly debating calling Will before deciding that it was best to leave him out about anything concerning his father.

_dad wants to see me_

It didn’t take long to get a reply: _What about?_

He laid back on his bed and wondered why he was bothering her about it. He loved his dad. So things had been shitty lately; didn’t mean anything. The guy was in lockup. It probably wasn’t great for morale. He should leave her out of it.

 _idk,_ he texted back anyway.

Whatever hesitation he had, Layla didn’t share it: _Want some company?_

What would be the point? Things were what they were, and forcing a friend along for his criminally awkward family reunion wouldn’t change anything. That wasn’t why he’d texted her.

He didn’t know why he’d texted her.

_nah it’s cool_

He got up and headed out, calling to his mom that he’d be late getting back and not to wait up. His phone was still in his hand, and he hadn’t made it out of his driveway before he texted her again: _yeah u busy?_

He and Layla took the bus out to the compound. The public one didn’t fly nearly as smoothly as the school bus, but he didn’t glare her way when her hand gripped his forearm too tightly because she hadn’t berated him with questions the second they met up. He’d expected harassment and worry and probably pity, which would have given him the spark of regret for inviting her along that would have allowed him to take it back and go alone. She hadn’t done any of that, only smiled when he’d met her at the bus stop and asked if he wanted a stick of gum.

She yammered instead about the little plants she was growing on the windowsill of her tree house that were bigger than sprouts now but weren’t yielding to her powers the way she’d expected them to when she acquired the rare seeds. He pretended to be interested, and she pretended not to notice that he wasn’t. That was why he’d texted her. Layla knew when to push and when to look the other way. Will would have been drooped next to him, guilty about his own parents’ involvement in his dad’s capture, and made everything worse. He didn’t want someone else’s neurosis; he wanted calm.

The bus ride evened out, gliding smoothly for the back half of the trip, but Layla’s hand stayed resting on his arm. He didn’t shake her off.

He left Layla in a waiting room outside the room for visitors where she took out a book and didn’t make a big deal about where he was going or who he was going to see. She took the pressed flower that she was using as a bookmark out and set it down beside her while she settled in to read while she waited for him.

“Show him the star you can make with your fire snaps now,” she said.

That was what she started to call the little shapes he made out of the flickers of fire he created at the end of his fingertips. He kept on with the trick but wasn’t able to make her requested heart yet. Still, it was an effective way to distract her when he was tired of studying.

“Powers don’t work in there.” Any rooms where the prisoners were allowed access were fully locked down or there would have been a breakout every five minutes. It was certainly the only thing holding his father there.

“Then tell him about it,” she said. “Tell him he’s now the proud father of a son that can almost sort of, kind of make random identifiable shapes. As long as they’re really, really tiny.”

Warren pointed down the hall towards the entrance to the building. “You can start walking home now.”

She smiled and lifted her book to start reading.

It turned out she didn’t have to wait for long. He slammed the visitors’ door behind him before she’d worked her way through a full chapter. He didn’t look at her as he neared, but he did lean down to pick up her pressed flower and lay it back down on the page she had open in her book on his way past.

“We’re leaving.”

She shot up and had to trot to keep up with his brisk exit, shoving her book back in her bag along the way. He could feel her trying to catch his eye, but he looked stubbornly ahead. He marched back through the security check, through the door, and down the steps outside, seething and not sure where to direct his anger. Powers weren’t allowed on the grounds. Any and all demonstrations of powers were treated as hostile in that zone since all efforts had to be made to prevent any sort of prison break from the outside. Not that Warren wanted to bust his father out. He just wanted to let the fire flow out of him and scorch the earth down to the roots.

The trouble he would catch if he lost control of his temper and let the flames fly right then and there wasn’t what restrained him. It was the press of the warm, concerned gaze he was catching and ignoring coming from Layla at his side and how it would hurt her to see the greenery turned to ash if he let himself burn out all the anger that needed purging. He shouldn’t have brought her. Then he could burn whatever the hell he wanted without an audience.

His father wasn’t looking to catch up. He didn’t ask about how he was doing or how his mother was. He’d jumped straight to Stronghold. Word had reached him that Warren was hanging out with Will, and he had a few ideas on how Warren could make the Strongholds’ lives miserable with a little creativity and a lot of fire. He’d stormed out before he’d gotten to the details. His father only laughed and told him to come back when he was feeling more like himself.

That was the thing, though. This was him. He wasn’t the kind of guy that would flip on a friend, and he didn’t want to be even if he knew his father would be happier with a son like that.

He slunk to the very back of the bus for the return trip and half-thought Layla would avoid him and his moodiness by choosing a seat by herself farther up, but she sat down in the aisle seat next to him even with his eyes out the window and his jaw clenched.

Halfway back, she tapped his arm. He turned his head in her general direction but still wouldn’t look at her.

“Can I get a light?”

His gaze jumped up at that. If there was anything Layla got hyped about as much as her plants, it was the environment and health in general. It wasn’t a cigarette she was holding up, though, but the stem of her pressed flower bookmark. He snapped a flame to the tip, and the top of it lit up and spread. She’d bent it into the shape of a heart. It burned fast and bright, and she shook and blew it out before it reached her fingertips.

“I win,” she said.

“You win?”

She shrugged. “As you can see, making a fire heart is actually very easy. I can only attribute your _numerous_ failures to a lack of motivation. And I think you can agree that I’m both stronger and more powerful than you are.”

“Is that right?”

She nodded, managing a straight face.

“Well, I agree that you’re a stronger cheater and a more powerful bullshitter.”

“Results are results, Warren. The proof’s right here.”

Warren scooped up the burnt flower that was chipping dryly and tossed it out the window. “What proof was that? I’m looking everywhere. I don’t see anything.”

She gaped at him a moment where he was slumped low enough in his seat beside her for them to be eye to eye. “Let’s look at the facts. I create life.”

“Like God.”

“Mm-hmm. And you—”

“Create fire.”

“Like a matchstick. Or a caveman.”

He was about to protest her assessment, but her amusement broke off with a quiet gasp as the bus hit turbulence and rattled in the sky. She reached for his wrist until it passed, and her tight grip on him was steadying in more ways than one even after she let go.

Staring out the window once more, he broached the visit with his father even if he wasn’t quite ready to get into it. “My dad is kind of an asshole.”

She didn’t pump him for information, didn’t push him past where he was ready to go, didn’t make him look at her when staring out the window and putting up a false sense of a barrier between him and everything else was the best he could do for now. She was matter-of-fact when she replied, “Well… I, for one, vastly prefer cavemen to assholes.”

Warren slumped until the back of his head hit her shoulder, and the ghost of a smile flickered at the corner of his lips. Yeah. That was why he’d brought Layla.

****

In the fall of their junior year at Sky High, Warren’s father escaped from containment.

He knew something was up before he got called into the office. Every eye in the school was glued to him as he walked the halls and only jumping at a couple of the kids got them to divert their eyes and scramble away. But only momentarily. It put a pit in his stomach on the way to the office, and he knew it. He knew it before the words were out of his mother’s mouth.

His first mistake was staying for the rest of the school day instead of taking her up on her offer to go home where he knew he would have spent all of his time alternately stewing on his own and eavesdropping on his mother’s conversations with the officials crawling around the house in case his dad decided to pop in. Right. Because he’d spent the last few years planning his escape only to be stupid enough to go home as soon as he was out, the one place everyone would know to look for him. No. He was long gone.

His second mistake was taking Will up on it when he texted an invite to his house. Will wasn’t alone. Both of his parents were in the kitchen too, and from the looks on their faces they weren’t there to offer him a drink. What seemed like a good distraction from the sure-to-be hellscape at home turned out to be a pin of wolves. And he was the sheep. Layla was there too, but she wasn’t a wolf or a sheep. Sitting at the kitchen table with her arms crossed and her eyes downcast, he wasn’t sure which side she was on. And it bothered him.

Then it bothered him that it bothered him. Layla could side with whoever she wanted, and it made sense if it was Will and his family. She was practically a part of it. If there was an outsider there, it was him.

“Hey, honey,” Will’s mom greeted him when he stopped at the doorway and decided to lean against it rather than come in and sit with the rest of them. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine.” It was short and ruder than he meant it if only because it was flat. He’d gotten into the habit of trying around Will’s family. He wasn’t sure why he bothered. Maybe because there was an easy love and bond between them and he hadn’t wanted to disrupt it. On his more naive days, he felt less on the fringe and more on the inside, if even just a little.

“Listen, son.” Stronghold came over and gave his arm a squeeze. “My wife and I were hoping you might sit down and talk with us for a few minutes. We know that you go visit your father and thought you might have some light to shed on where he might be.”

Warren’s gaze cut quickly to Layla. He didn’t go out of his way to visit, but he’d gone once or twice every other month since the fight they’d had over the Strongholds. Layla usually came with him. It hit wrong that she could be camped here talking to them about their trips, her in the waiting room, always with a different book, and telling them about things he told her in confidence on the ride home. Her eyes met his, though, and she gave him the tiniest shake of her head. It shouldn’t have brought him so much relief, but it did.

“The logs show that you’re out there pretty regularly. We’d love to pick your brain. Do you mind?” Stronghold turned with a wave of his hand towards the table like it was a foregone conclusion that he would follow.

“Yeah,” Warren said, but Stronghold kept moving towards the table so he clarified, “Yeah, I mind.”

All eyes were on him, and though Will’s discomfort at least showed some uncertainty about his father’s plan to milk him for information, it didn’t stop him from backing him up.

“It’s better if we catch up with him early, right?” Will asked. “Before he, you know.”

Disappears off the grid forever.

Warren wasn’t convinced that was such a bad thing, and he sure as hell wasn’t feeling like it was his responsibility to go after his own father. He hadn’t missed Will’s use of ‘we’; it wasn’t just his parents gunning for his dad this time. Junior was on the case too. All powered up and ready to assist. What a happy little family.

“Honey, I know this is hard.” Will’s mom didn’t fake her sympathy, but there was a difference between sympathizing with someone and actually understanding how this shit felt. “But your father is a complicated man.” At least she hadn’t said evil. “Bringing him back in before anything bad can happen is for the best for everyone, even him.”

The thing was, his father usually was the bad thing that happened to people, but he was still his dad. Sliding briefly on the inside or resting firmly on the fringes, the Strongholds weren’t his real family. He wasn’t going to flip on someone who was. Anger began to flare up. He could feel it under his skin, but there was something worse there too, something closer to his heart.

Layla stood up, and her chair lightly scraped the floor. “We’ll think about it.”

She took his arm, ignoring the collective surprise from the Strongholds and pulled him back out towards the front door before any of them could stop them. Warren didn’t miss that ‘we’ either, and that one felt better. She took the porch steps quickly like she was afraid that she would have to be more confrontational with the others if they followed them out. She only hesitated at the curb when she saw that he’d ridden to the house on his motorcycle. She was on it often enough to not be afraid that he would speed and send her flying off it anymore, but the hands bunched in her green skirt were empty.

“I don’t have my helmet.” She glanced back at the house, and he knew that she was about to tell him to take off before the others came. That catch near his heart throbbed worse at the thought. “Maybe you should—”

“Take mine.” He grabbed his helmet from the handlebar where he’d left it and put it in her hands. He got the bike going, and she only hesitated another second before securing the helmet and climbing on behind him. It must have been serious because she didn't launch into her usual lecture about switching to a more environmentally friendly vehicle. He waited for her to tuck in her skirt and draw her arms around him before he turned. “Where we going?”

Anywhere was better than there, and he couldn’t go home.

“The garden.”

With Layla, that could have meant any number of places, but he knew what she was talking about.

“Hold on to me,” he murmured.

They were long past her needing a reminder, but her hold went tighter than it needed to be and she replied anyway, “I promise.”

The garden was a small clearing in the wooded area of a path at the park that he and Layla had discovered when she’d dragged him out for one of her walks to get in tune with nature. He didn’t get the same pleasure out of it that she did, but going along was easier than dealing with her whining if he resisted. He’d suggested that she do something with the empty spot to liven it up, and she’d taken to the task with surprising enthusiasm even for her.

The flat half-dead clearing was now fostering new life all along its borders in pretty rows of flowers and rosebushes in full bloom. She was crazy about the idea of creating a small meadow, but her powers didn’t extend to bodies of water so she hadn’t worked out how to do it yet.

He pulled the bike off the path and into the trees a little ways before they climbed off. He was glad that they’d gone somewhere less obvious, but it wouldn’t take long for Will to try looking there and he didn’t want to be around for the guilt trip about civic duty or whatever.

“Let’s not stick around too long. I want to dodge Will as long as possible.” Keeping it moving was probably key to that.

Layla glanced at him over her shoulder as she weaved her way through the daisies she’d planted and over to the one clear space left in the clearing where she fantasized about her imaginary pond.

“Will doesn’t know about this place. It’s just ours.”

She wasn’t looking at him as she said it, kneeling down to sit and smoothing her skirt, but the surprise of that stopped him in his tracks. She and Will hadn’t dated since freshman year, but they were still as tight as ever. He figured if he knew something, Will had to. The knot in his chest since he got the news about his dad released just enough to make room for something else, just as tight but warmer, that he wasn’t going to look at too hard. Instead, he sat down across from her and leaned back on his arms.

“What do you need?” she asked, quiet in that way of hers that didn’t sound demanding but imploring, like she was the one that needed something. He hadn’t figured out what it was or how to give it to her yet.

“This,” he said and laid down on his back, not opening his eyes even when he felt her come closer and do the same at his side. “This is good.”

It wasn’t that he wanted people to get hurt if his dad went off that way. It was just that… it couldn’t be him. Whatever went down, wherever his dad ended up, he couldn’t be the one that put him there.

“You get it, right?” He couldn’t look at her, didn’t want to know what he might see there: a lecture on the tip of her tongue, a speech on morality and the greater good. He didn’t have to, though, because she didn’t answer, didn’t push him towards a place he couldn’t go and didn’t rush to his defense either.

Layla simply took his hand in hers and stayed with him in the oasis she was building that no one knew about but them.

He hoped his dad was okay, wherever he was. Hoped that everything might work out all right. In the calm isolation of the garden, Warren felt for the first time that day, that it might.

****

It took until winter break for there to be any news about his dad. It didn’t come in the form of his capture thrown across headlines or school gossip this time. Warren found out his dad was still in town when he went home and found him lounging across the sofa. He stopped shaking snow off his coat sleeve and froze.

“Merry Christmas, son. How’s life?” His shit-eating grin was bad enough, but ripping the roof off of the gingerbread house that he’d made under duress (Layla threatened to fill his room with flowers if he didn’t help her) was what summoned and settled the frown on Warren’s face.

Perfect.

****

Warren snuck over to Layla’s house after he’d successfully hidden his father in the basement of their house before his mom got back from caroling with her gardening group friends. He threw a rock at her window and waited. It was Christmas Eve, but he knew she got too excited about Christmas morning to stay up too late the night before. Sure enough, she pushed her window up and stuck her head out, already changed into warm red and green trimmed pajamas. God. She belonged in one of those cheesy Hallmark movies where life was perfect and cheerful and everything worked out in the end.

He didn’t know what the hell he was doing there.

She smiled, big and happy, when she spotted him, and the hot urge to take off cooled. He nodded his head towards the tree house in her backyard and turned without waiting to see if she’d catch on or agree. One of these days, she wouldn’t, and he’d like that. Counting on people was stupid. Layla giving up and checking out on him would satisfy that ugly burn at the back of his heart that warned him not to count on anyone—not even her.

She came.

They climbed up into the tree house together, and she used her powers to close the vines she’d shielded the windows with to keep out the harsh cut of the winter winds. Warren flicked his wrist and lit the outdoor fire pit that he hauled up there when the weather turned cold so they wouldn’t freeze their asses off when they were hanging out.

Layla sat down next to him in front of it, crossing her legs with a shiver, and he frowned at her when he saw that she hadn’t bothered to pull on a coat before coming out to meet him. He shook his off and wrapped it around her. Her hands peeked out to tug it close, but her smile was undaunted by his frown. He was invulnerable to the cold, capable of warming himself from the inside out, but she wasn’t. And she should know better.

“I better not find you frozen out here in a block of ice one of these days,” he warned.

“Merry Christmas!” was her happy response as she bulldozed him sideways in a hug. He caught her before they both spilled over and fixed the coat back around her shoulders as he set her straight again.

“It’s not Christmas yet,” he grumbled.

“Practically.”

“And I’m serious about you coming out here without something thicker than that.” He made a face as he saw that the pajama top was covered in tiny cartoon reindeers and Santa heads.

Her eyes sparked in that teasing way that told him her spirits were too high with the Christmas spirit for him to get a serious answer out of her. “You know, advancements in cryogenics are further along than you think. If you find me as a popsicle, there’s no one better than you to thaw me out, Hot Hands.”

He leveled her with his hardest stare. “Never call me that again.”

“I think it should be your superhero name.” She grabbed his wrist and pressed something into his hand. “Here.”

He looked down at what looked like a tiny Barbie in a green dress and a plastic Hades toy with blue flames on his head.

“What is this?”

She struggled to stifle her laughter. “It’s you and me. It’s the closest things I could find. For our gingerbread house.”

Ah. The one currently being devoured by his fugitive father in his basement.

“I think we should get a dog, what about you? I think I have an old Lassie or Wishbone toy packed away somewhere—”

“Layla, my dad’s at my house.”

“—or we could… What?”

He met her eyes, and they’d gone huge. His pulse got hot, too hot, so hot that he needed to let it out, had to blaze the fire pit or leave to find something to burn down to ash. He needed to—

Layla’s hand found his wrist again. Her fingers curled around him, cool and steady, and her eyes were wide but not with anger or horror, just surprise. Surprise and a warm worry for him that challenged the heat that hummed beneath his skin. It dragged him back down from the spiral of panic that shot off at his own stupidity for saying it out loud, for telling her or anyone. She found him with a look and no words and held him still in the tree house with her without trying, really. She kind of had a way of doing that, easy and sure. Finding him when he got lost in all the damn noise.

“He says he’s been laying low,” he told her. “If my mom finds him in the house, she’ll turn him in. It’s the right thing to do.”

He waited. Watched her closely for some sign that she agreed with that assessment or would do the same herself, that she wanted him to do that too. The fingers around his wrist slid away from him, and she raised her palms up towards the pit for warmth.

“How long is he staying?” she asked.

The tightness in his chest relaxed. He added to the fire in the pit to shoot the flames higher and warm her faster, better.

“Not sure. Just a few days. You think I should let him?” He didn’t want to know the answer, and he needed her to tell him.

“I think he’s your father. And it’s Christmas. And he wanted to come home.” She looked at him, careful but pushing. She was always pushing when she knew she could, when she knew he needed it. “And you wanted him to come home.”

“You think that makes me stupid?” he asked, because it was true. He knew who his father was, despite the denial and despite the loyalty seeded so deeply within himself that he couldn’t dig it out unless he found his way down to the roots and ripped his father out whole.

“I think it makes you lucky. Not everyone gets their Christmas wish.” She leaned into his side until he allowed her to catch his eye again. “But, Warren, if it looks like he’s going to hurt someone…”

She didn’t have to say it. Layla loosened up a lot about using powers outside of school over the years, but some rules weren’t flexible. Everyone had their breaking point, and his mom had reached hers a long time ago even though he knew she loved his dad so much it hurt her to see who he’d become and let him go. He wouldn’t let him hurt anybody.

“I promise,” he said, and it felt more important than it should for Layla to know he meant it. Know that he could love someone lost without becoming lost himself.

“Who knows?” Layla said, bumping his shoulder with hers. “Maybe he’s turning over a new leaf and wants to be good now.”

“Nah, no way.”

“How do you know?” she asked, curious and a little wary.

He looked her dead in the eye and recalled the green sugary gummy that his dad had chewed through as he devoured the knob and the rest of the gingerbread door they’d made. “He ate our house.”

It took a second to sink it, but when it did, Layla started to get up. “I’m turning him in.”

He choked off his laugh and pulled her back down against his side. She settled without resisting, pulling his coat back over her shoulder when it slid off the side.

“Merry Christmas,” he murmured and wondered at her soft smile and how easily it always came to her, how it was so bright and naive and full that, lately, he could almost feel it when she turned it his way.

“Merry Christmas.”

He made her keep his coat to walk back inside. The cold didn’t bother him anyway.

****

Warren did a lot of crap he wasn’t proud of in his life. He scared people, mostly on purpose. He pushed them away. He’d cheated on homework once or twice when it suited him and didn’t feel all that much guilt about it. He knew he came off a certain way and liked the perk of being left alone too much to change, but this was different. He knew it was wrong before he did it and felt guilty before it was done. Because his family loyalty ran too deep and because, honestly, he was probably an asshole, he did it anyway.

Layla stood in the middle of her family’s kitchen staring at Warren’s dad dig his way rudely inside of the fridge and pluck out the leftovers from the tofu thing her family had eaten for dinner the night before. To her credit, she hadn’t turned him away on the spot after opening the front door and finding the two of them standing there on her porch while her parents were out. Warren had waited until they’d both left before bringing his dad over.

“Your mom wants to renovate the basement,” Layla said, staring at his dad root around for a fork but trying to follow what he told her after she’d shot a panicked look towards the street where anyone could have seen them and yanked them both inside out of sight.

“Yeah,” he said. “Stress makes her decorate. She painted both our rooms and flipped the spare bedroom into a pottery studio after my dad first got locked up. She’s like a one woman construction crew when she gets anxious. All this stuff with my dad is making her crazy. I had to get him out of there before she found him.”

“Right.”

She stared at his father treating himself to her food and met Warren’s eyes at last.

“Warren.”

He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “I know. I know. You don’t have to say it.”

“He can’t stay in the house,” she said anyway.

“I’ll get him out of here,” he said, feeling hopeless and tense enough to build a whole new subdivision if he had his mom’s stress relief issues. “I shouldn’t have brought him here in the first place. It’s not fair to you to drag you into my—”

“Warren.” Layla reached out and grabbed his wrist, taking a quick step forward so he had to look down at her and shut up. “My parents will find him if he stays in here. We’ll have to hide him in the tree house.”

If he’d ever doubted her friendship or thought twice about her really caring about him, he wanted to go back and scorch that version of himself.

“Yeah?” he asked because he had to be sure. She didn’t owe him anything, and getting caught could get her in serious trouble if she helped him. It wouldn’t have been a slap on the wrist if they were busted, and he didn’t want her to take any hits. He would make sure she didn’t.

“Yeah,” she said with a smile that was nervous but sure. Then she turned to his father and walked over to him. “Mr. Peace, can I get you something to drink?”

“Vodka. Straight,” he said.

She grabbed a glass from a cabinet. “How about some juice?”

Warren slunk over and dropped onto the stool opposite his dad, watching Layla pour him a drink and get a second glass for him without needing to ask before replacing the juice and getting a soda for him instead. There was an ache next to the anxiety in his heart as she came over to give it to him, and it worried him worse than the stress because he didn’t know what to do with it.

She started to lean against the counter, but he pulled the stool next to his out for her and she came over to sit by him instead.

“Thanks,” he murmured, “for the drink.”

And for saving his ass. For not telling him to get lost, not ratting them out. For being there when he wondered why she bothered and grew increasingly miserable at the idea that she might not be for much longer if he didn’t stop pulling shit like this.

She eyed his father as he shoved food in his mouth and ignored them and raised a knowing eyebrow at Warren. “You are reluctantly welcome.”

“It’s just for a few days,” he promised. Until he figured something out or his dad did.

She nodded. “It will be fine.”

And for those first few days, it was.

The spring semester started, so his dad was left to his own devices during the day while they were at school. Afterwards, he went home with her and they brought his dad food and drinks and entertainment. He snuck into the house to use the restroom and shower when her parents were out and was being good about staying out of sight.

They sort of forgot to factor in that it wasn’t just her parents that sought Layla’s company out. They were lucky when the first week passed without incident. They never should have pushed it to two.

The second week started out cool. His dad liked Layla. They’d sit up in the tree house, and she bragged on Warren, told him about stuff he’d done or accomplished at school and talked him up like he was some big shot hero in the making. He hated it, but she was unstoppable when she got herself going. It was okay, though. His dad liked hearing about it, weirdly enough, since he wasn’t all that interested when Warren told him about his life himself. Maybe something about hearing it from an outsider painted a picture better, even if Warren figured that she laid it on kind of thick.

They were up there one Friday evening doing more of that with a game of poker going on. Forget having a poker face, Layla didn’t understand the basic concept of secrecy in the game. She kept showing him her hand and asking for help until he rolled his eyes and moved to sit right against her side so they could look at each other’s cards more easily and he could talk her through it. When he could, he let her win. He stopped doing that when he noticed the smirk on his dad’s face after he’d done it again.

“I think you’ve got it,” he grumbled and moved back over to his own side.

“No, come back,” she whined. “It’s better when we’re on the same team.”

She actually reached over and curled her hand in his jacket to try and physically tug him back. He wanted to laugh at her and resist her pulling to stay on his side but only managed half as he scooted back against her.

“You suck at this,” he teased as he reached around her shoulder to pluck the queen of hearts from her hand. She twisted under his arm, but he successfully snatched it away. “I’m stealing this. You don’t deserve her.”

“You can’t do that!” Layla turned to his dad where he was chuckling across from them. “He can’t do that. Mr. Peace, can he steal the queen of hearts?”

His dad didn’t look up from his cards, sounding way too satisfied at Warren’s expense when he retorted, “I think he already has.”

“I want this one then,” Layla said and took his two of clubs from him.

Warren snorted. “That is less than useless. You’re not good at this, or… actually is there _anything_ you are good at? We could do that next to help you save face. What should we do, grow something? Or, what else are you good at? Oh yeah.” He remembered when she took another one of his cards that would do nothing to improve her hand. “You’re awesome at getting on my last nerve. We should have a nerve off. You’d win without my help for once.”

She made a face at him that made his chest go light and a smile spread across his face. “We could compete and see who can make a heart out of fire, but oh wait. You still can’t do that. And it’s been forever.”

Low blow. He’d gotten better and hadn’t stopped practicing, mostly because he wanted to show off when he finally got it, but he still fell short with only a wobbly fire circle these days at the end of his fingertips.

He snatched all of her cards from her that time and mixed them up with his own. “Alright, Dad, it’s just you versus me with ten cards now. What do you think?”

Layla erupted into giggles but didn’t mind getting cut from the game, leaning against his side in a way that sent a warm glow humming under his skin without the use of his powers. He was about to deal her back in when a head popped into the tree house through the open trapdoor. They all froze.

And just like that, Will Stronghold knew exactly where Warren’s fugitive father was hiding.

****

The moment hung in the balance. Will stared at them. They stared at Will.

Warren’s dad thawed first. He grinned broadly. “You’re Stronghold’s kid, right? Finally! Something worth annihilating.”

Layla’s eyes went wide.

“Dad!”

He chuckled with a swig of his drink, utterly unconcerned with being busted. His cavalier attitude was enough for Will to find his voice.

“I can’t believe you guys!”

“Will, just chill.”

“It isn’t what it looks like,” Layla said as Will pulled himself the rest of the way up and stood across from them with his arms crossed, looking as square and uptight as his old man.

“Oh. So you and Warren haven’t been hiding his supervillain dad in your tree house after he escaped from jail?”

Layla squirmed. “Well. When you put it that way…” She cringed. “Yeah, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing.”

She held out as long as she could. A poker player, she definitely was not.

“What were you thinking?” Will stared at her incredulously. “Warren, I understand, but you know better.”

Warren stopped short of telling him to kiss his ass, but it was close.

Will was in lecture mode or hero mode where he moralized and nearly sprained his ankle climbing so damn high on that high horse of his. He told them why they were wrong, ranted over the sound of laughter coming from where Warren’s dad was still sitting. Warren and Layla had jumped to their feet, but his dad was about as concerned as he would have been if an ant had crawled up there with them. Then again, he’d always thought of the Strongholds as insects.

It was when Will reached into his pocket to retrieve his phone and said that he was going to call his parents that things shifted as he shook his head at them and kept on and on like an energizer snitch.

“Warren,” Layla said, quietly enough that the interruption didn’t slow or startle Will out of his heroic, pain in the ass tirade. Warren looked down at her at his side. Her gaze was steady on Will, but he felt an energy roll off of her as she called her power to the surface. It buzzed up his arm and sent a chill down his spine. “Get him out of here.”

He didn’t have time to ask what she meant or what she planned to do. She didn’t give herself time to talk herself out of it either. She just did it.

The vines hanging at the window to block out the outside chill shot inside the tree house, snuck around Will from behind and wound fast and tight over his arms and legs, binding his limbs down and effectively locking him in place. Any attempt at making a phone call died, and for a second all he could do was yip in surprise and bulge his eyes at her. Then the lecture went on, only he was yelling now, and that much goody-goody scolding with a megaphone was a lot.

Layla flicked her head, and another vine wound around Will’s mouth to shut him up. She held her hands out, tightening her hold on him when Will started to struggle. His strength would break through his binds.

“Go,” she said.

Warren was pretty sure he was more shocked than even Will, but his father only applauded behind them.

“Layla, are you sure?” Warren asked. Because this was a step beyond a favor. When Will made that call, and he was going to make that call as soon as the vines broke, things were going to go sideways and she didn’t come out looking good. Trouble would land on all of them, and they weren’t the only ones who would get hurt. “Will is your friend.”

“He’s yours too. So?”

That was different. She didn’t know what she was doing.

“So…”

Layla spared him a look, still dedicating most of her concentration on restraining Will. “I’m your friend too, aren’t I?”

He wanted to correct her that she was his best friend, but it felt wrong in his head. Or too small for what she was, but he couldn’t quite bridge the gap between what he felt and what he could safely call her. Everything felt untrue or unearned. This was loyalty beyond what he could or would ask of her.

“Layla…”

Her voice was low, but he was leaning close so he felt her whispered breath across his cheek when she turned to him, eyes warm and sad but determined. “Warren, he has to go back. But it doesn’t have to be tonight. And it doesn’t have to be like this. Please, go. I’ve got this.”

He hesitated, but she was stubborn. He tried telling her no sometimes. The key word was tried. Layla didn’t need his approval for much, didn’t need his permission at all, and he knew that look. Her mind was made up.

He spoke to his dad, but his eyes never left hers. “Dad, we need to leave. Now.”

He shared none of Warren’s trepidation and got to his feet with an amiable smile.

“My dear.” His dad gave Layla a quick kiss on the cheek and tipped the bill of an imaginary hat at Will, roped up as he was in vines. “Stronghold.”

He smirked as Warren dragged him over and down through the trapdoor. Warren hesitated in his descent and looked up from the floor. Layla stood, a determined frown darkening her pretty features as she combated Will’s efforts to free himself. No one had ever taken a hit like this for him before. He’d do what he could to block her from the inevitable blowback.

“Hey.”

She looked down at him, surprised he was still there. He didn’t know how he knew he could do it, didn’t know why or how or what dam broke to free him up, but Warren held one hand back up through the open trapdoor and gave his fingers a hard snap. A hot flame burst to life at the tips and bent like a wire in a quick perfect shape of a heart. He flicked his wrist, and the flames shot up and grew huge, maintaining that stupid hot red outline that Layla had been nagging him about for the last two years.

She gasped, first at the fire, then at the heart.

“I owe you one,” he promised and climbed down after his father, taking the fire and Layla’s blinding smile with him.

****

Warren parked his bike in the parking lot of a gas station and started off. He was halfway down the block in the direction of the auto repair shop where he was planning to hide his father since he knew it was closed for the week when he realized that his dad wasn’t following him. He turned back around to find the gas station door closing behind him as he disappeared inside. Great.

Warren hurried back. They would have to find somewhere better than the auto shop now since the surveillance cameras inside the gas station would pick him up for sure. He glanced at the clerk when he went in, but he was staring at a magazine and not paying attention. He found his dad at the slushie fountain.

“What are you doing?”

“Deciding between grape and cherry.”

Warren pinched the bridge of his nose, but it was easier to get it over with and get out than it would have been to drag him out by his hair. Not as satisfying but quicker. His father beamed at the counter as he waited for Warren to pay for the two slushies (cherry won out), and they made their way out.

“It’s freezing. I don’t want a slushie,” Warren said as his dad tried to hand him one of them in the parking lot.

“You’re freezing,” his father taunted. “You. If I’d known your greatest weakness was crushed ice and red syrup, I wouldn’t have been impressed by your ability with fire.”

Warren snatched one of the slushies just to make him shut up. His dad smiled but didn’t get on the bike when they reached it, instead going over and sitting on the edge of the curb to drink. Warren rolled his eyes at the sky and called for strength he didn’t have and patience he couldn’t afford if they were going to get out of there and hide somewhere in time to not get caught.

“You may not remember this, but you and I and your mom used to get slushies on the weekends and head to the park when you were little.”

Warren looked up.

His dad was thoughtful. “I couldn’t remember if we got grape or cherry.”

Warren looked down at his drink and had a visceral memory of those days, sunshine and laughter. Before it all went to crap.

“It was strawberry,” he said and took a sip from the straw. It was the wrong flavor.

His dad nodded. “Ah. They didn’t have that in there.”

Warren stared at his dad as he looked out at the slow traffic across the street and dread began a slow climb through his veins. “What are we doing here, Dad?”

He got a smile and a sigh. “Saying goodbye. For now.”

Night had fallen and headlights broke through the darkness as cars carted drivers home to families and pets and all that normal shit that Warren lost and tried to forget because remembering that he used to have it made it worse not to have it now. He sat down on the curb next to his father.

“We could still go. There’s other places you could hide.” He knew Layla would reason with Will and try to buy them time even after he was out of the vines. They could find a place and lay low.

“I keep running now, and they’ll bring you in for it. Your girl too.”

Warren shifted and wouldn’t look at him, but he could feel his dad’s eyes on him. And his smile.

“You know what you’re doing there, son?”

He didn’t have to ask what he was talking about. He knew what he meant. He thought of Layla when she was happy with him and Layla when she was mad and Layla when she was being an annoying pain in the ass and making him help her save some dumb plant or forcing him to waste time training his powers to learn precision instead of just strength, just so he could see her smile when he could finally snap his fingers and give her his heart on fire.

It was weird for one person to be so many things to him and almost nothing on paper. ‘Friend’ was a joke and true and cut a mile too short in every direction. ‘Friend’ was just the tip of something rootless and wild that took up every part of him and couldn’t be dug out. Layla was everything already and inevitable, still—yet more was there, somehow, if he reached for it. And that scared the shit out of him because it was one thing to fuck up when he had nothing to lose and another to put himself on the line when losing any of what she was to him would be too big a loss.

Happiness, he reminded himself, was just that thing he used to have.

So did he know what he was doing with her?

“Nope.”

His dad laughed and clapped him on the back. “Good. Trust me, kid. A girl like that is going to knock you on your ass no matter what you do. Best to leave your seatbelt off and enjoy the ride.”

So they sat out on the curb in the cold outside the gas station and talked about school and Layla and his mom and everything they hadn’t had the nerve to broach since he’d broken out. They drank slushies that weren’t strawberry but were still good, in their way, and Warren wasn’t happy but he let go of some of the things on the other side of it—and whatever else he was, he was ready.

His father surrendered himself without a fight before Will ever made that call. Warren wasn’t sorry, but Will forgave him anyway so he decided to forgive him too. It was a good thing, he figured, to get better with forgiveness. His mother told him it strengthened the heart, and he needed that shit as strong as he could get it. Layla’s heart could break mountains, and she deserved someone who could keep up.

****

The doors to the bus closed and Warren prepared to lean back in his seat and sleep on the ride to visit his father when a familiar voice floated in through his open window.

“Wait! Hey, wait for me! Hang on!”

He looked out and spotted Layla running with her bag swinging off her shoulder towards the bus. Warren had half a mind to let it go to watch her pout after the departing bus, but that half was overruled by the half that wanted her to get on. He stood up and told—didn’t ask—the bus driver to hold up and reopen the doors. Layla boarded and hurried to the back, catching herself on the seats down the aisle as the bus started moving, and threw herself down into the seat beside him.

“I made it!”

“You did,” he agreed, slumped sideways against the window to watch her catch her breath. “Didn’t think you were coming.”

“Why? You’re visiting your dad, right? I always come with you.” It was the casual way she said it, like she couldn’t understand his doubt, that eased the worry that he’d ignored but been pushed under all morning.

“Yeah, but after everything that happened with him, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d bailed. My dad made a lot of shit go wrong.” He knew she and Will made up, but a lot of girls didn’t mess with guys who screwed their lives up. Fool me once and all that.

“Warren.” Layla looked down at her lap where her hands wrung together over her bag. When she met his eyes again, determination hardened behind them like she thought her words might catch fighting ones from him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Warren looked back at her and let himself see her. Past her beauty, which could startle him silent with a smile, past the friendship she offered freely, past the loyalty she showed him beyond what he deserved, past the trust she had in him that he had in her without question—to Layla Williams, the girl who gave when he needed her and wanted what he’d have her take.

“No?”

“Nope,” she said, and it was a promise and reassurance at once.

He could have pushed her away, which came naturally. It was easy, and it would have kept them what they were: good friends with no risk. There was security in keeping Layla without ever having her. There was cowardice too.

Warren’s instincts told him to pull away.

He leaned forward, caught her eyes and murmured, “Good.”

Surprise crossed her features, but Layla smiled and when she did, it was with a spark in her eyes and a determination of a different kind.

“Good,” she agreed.

Warren slid a warm hand against her cheek, checking her eyes as she stilled, pulse picking up to match her own, and leaned in close. Gave her time to pull away. Gave himself time to be grateful when she didn’t. He pressed his lips to hers, gentle, to mark her as something he wanted, to let himself be claimed if she’d have him. It might have been sweet, could have been warm and telling but chaste in itself, but Layla was a giver and kissed her way past the last of his defenses. Warren smiled against her mouth.

Yeah, he decided. This was good.


End file.
